(Do note that off weeks are like participation trophies: Every team gets one.)

As for where they are as a team, few imagined the Texans would have reached this point so early in the 2013 season.

And where are they?

At a point where Matt Schaub is one of the worst starting quarterbacks in the NFL, and Case Keenum, who led the team to all of one touchdown and 16 points when he played, is the team's best option at quarterback.

Worse, McNair even offered the preposterous notion that no other coach could have gotten more from the team, as if playing hard and losing by a little is a substitute for winning.

Bull on parade

As if the caffeine-free, gluten-free, lactose-free, sugar-free, vegan one-point near-victory to the Chiefs was as satisfying as the real thing.

That's some bull on parade right there.

It's OK for an airline to be happy about a near miss. It's sad when an NFL team is.

I mean, how many games does a guy have to lose around here to be put on notice? Kubiak, whose contract has but one more year remaining after this season, must be trying to find out.

The Texans' five-game skid is the longest in his mostly mediocre 71/2-year tenure, which has slowly developed into him challenging the Bengals' Marvin Lewis for the title of the coach who has been in the NFL the longest with the least to show for it.

The widely accepted idea that McNair made the right call when he stuck with Kubiak in 2010 because the Texans made the playoffs the next two years is an understandable leap, but it's a reach.

Do you really believe Kubiak is the only coach on the planet who could have led the Texans to the playoffs the last two years?

Kubiak has been here long enough for slippage this year to be costly, especially a total collapse.

Overshadowed

The two coaches who were hired the same year as Kubiak and have those jobs (the Packers' Mike McCarthy and the Saints' Sean Payton) each has won a Super Bowl. Two of the three coaches with more years with their teams than Kubiak (Bill Belichick, Patriots, and Tom Coughlin, Giants) have won multiple Super Bowls.

Four of the five coaches who have been with their teams as long as Kubiak has been with the Texans have first-place squads this year, including Lewis, who is in his 11th season and has won four division titles.

This is arguably Kubiak's worst year.

He is a quarterbacks guru, yet QB has been the worst-performing position on the team. He is an offensive tactician, but after finishing in the top 10 in each of the previous four seasons, his offense is 30th (out of 32 teams) in the league in scoring.

Even with where the Texans are, a playoff season is possible. The website makenflplayoffs.com puts their chances at achieving that goal at 12.4 percent.

"It's not where we thought we would be at this point," receiver Andre Johnson said. "Expectation levels were higher than they've ever been. We never thought we would be in this position at our bye week."

Do the math

Should the Texans go 9-0 the rest of the way, they would be a virtual lock to claim a playoff spot. Even if they lost only one game, they would have better than a 99 percent chance of qualifying for the postseason.

Two losses, and their mathematical chance drops to 84 percent.

Three losses? Forget about it.

Have the Texans shown enough to make a case they are capable of coming close to winning out?

Their quarterback is about to be benched, their injuries are mounting and their coach has yet to figure out how to turn things around.

As Yogi Berra once said, the future ain't what it used to be.

Listen to "The Rush" with Jerome Solomon and Dave Tepper from noon-2 p.m. weekdays on 97.5 FM.